Content by devs for devs

Microsoft UK Developers

The goal of cloud games is to provide gamers with the best experiences possible, and in this post we will outline some of the best practice from across UK indies, studios and research. We will share...

Another month, another extensive list of events you could be going to! Be sure to give the list the once over, and don’t be too afraid of those prices! Some venues will offer reduced prices if you enquire, and even if you can’t attend the day in person, keep your eyes peeled for the content that comes from them afterwards.

Using popular open source frameworks in today’s world like Breeze and Angular JS can open up many more options when working with platforms like SharePoint 2013 and Office 365. Leveraging the new API’s in SharePoint and Office 365 you are able to create rich integration extensibility using the open source frameworks.

Want to learn how to make your first video game? Do you want to learn something new to give you more options for employment? Microsoft Virtual Academy has free courses and resources that will help you to learn.

There are many resources online that can help you when you get stuck or want to learn something new, but sometimes it’s easier to find and meet with people that can talk you through it. This is the aim with our cloud and web camps, which are free to attend events that are open to everyone.

Colleges in our local area get together, enter teams and compete against one another to develop a mobile app. This was the concept we came up with during a computing lesson. Very soon after, as you might already expect, what was originally an idea turned into something significantly more.

If you’re not quite ready to deploy Visual Studio 2015 in your environment but still want to use Open Source community tools, I’ll walk you through getting a couple of the more popular ones working in your environment. I will be using Visual Studio 2013 but you can use anything as I’m just running commands in the command line.

The Global Game Jam sees thousands of people, from students to professional developers, creating games in under 48 hours. I returned for my fourth year, and the second year as part of Very Scary Scenario, a totally professional and serious developer. Honest.

True speech interaction is something we don’t see very often in gaming. Sure, you have recorded audio for NPCs and a few non-silent protagonists, but it’s very rare for the player to interact with speech themselves. So what can Cortana do for our apps and games?

Continuing the series of articles highlighting SQL tips, tricks and how to videos from previous SQLBits events, Microsoft Technology Advisor Wesley Backelant introduces us to the wonderful world of OData, from SQL Bits XI.

Are you looking to improve user acquisition and user retention for your app? We’ve picked up some tips from app events from around the UK, so here is a list of ways you can improve your games and get a bigger audience.

For a long time, the “de facto” way of providing application configuration settings was to use the web/app.config. Even Microsoft encouraged and promoted this practice. And although it’s the “recommended” way and there is a nice API that supports reading these values, there is still a lot to be desired.

Microsoft announced a plethora of new features, ideas and devices at the recent “Windows 10: The Next Chapter” livestream, which was held on the 21st January. However, while you may have caught the buzz from some of the big announcements like Project Spartan, the HoloLens and DirectX 12, you may have missed something if you weren’t watching.

Microsoft Windows Platform Development MVP Peter Foot’s project now brings a subset of the Windows API to iOS to make it easier for Windows developers to create cross-platform apps. Android will follow soon.

When it comes to patching apps and making UI changes, it’s always best to know exactly what your users want and whether or not you’re catering to them. There are many ways to reach out and learn what it is your user base want, so here is a list of seven ways to go about it.

When working with DSC (Desired State Configuration) a difficult concept can be that your desired state script is ‘compiled’ to a MOF file that is then ‘run’ by the desired state manager on the target machine. This is a two-step affair - and you have no real input on the second part. This is made more complex when Release Management is involved.

Dan Hubert from Appy Parking has gone from idea to reality. His app now helps people in London to find parking without the need to drive around aimlessly, and there are bigger plans still. The app also benefits from Microsoft Azure, and the team also went through Microsoft Ventures in London.

Want to get into game design but don’t know where to start? Take this Microsoft Virtual Academy course and you will be able to learn how to use Marmalade, a game engine that allows you to create games for various platforms.

It has been almost two years since I graduated from Staffordshire University, having finally completed a Master's degree in Video Game Design. During my time there, the uni became an official venue for the Global Game Jam, an event which throws you into small teams with the aim of making a video game in only 48 hours.